Updated State Aid Template available from TEA

Updated State Aid Template available from TEA

August 4, 2020 | Financial Management

The Charter School 2020-2021 State Aid Template is NOW AVAILABLE on the Texas Education Agency website!

Over the last several months, Charter School Success has been working with our client charters to help develop their 2020-2021 budget, using the 2019-2020 State Aid Template information and calculations. Now that the 2020-2021 Estimate of State Aid Template is available, we will be able to provide accurate information for our client’s 2020-2021 fiscal year budget, which will be approved during the August board meeting.  We’ll also be determining if revenue information, for our June 30 year-end clients’ budget will need a board approved amendment. Click here to download the updated template.

How does CSS use the template to in conjunction with our charter clients?

For Existing Charters, we use it to help:

  • Build Fund 420 State Revenue Budget estimates for budget development,
  • Determine first month’s 420 State Foundation School Program (FSP) payment estimates,
  • Compare this current year Summary Of  Finance (SOF) to new SOF calculations based on legislative changes,
  • Recommend the use of the template for FSP estimate report if our client charters have significant increase or decrease in enrollment from year to year.  This helps to allow TEA to adjust your first payments prior to your first six weeks report.

For our New Charters, we use it to help:

  • Advise new Charters that are required to submit an FSP Estimate Data Report on how TEA will use this information to determine their first Foundation State Program payments (due August 1)
  • Build Fund 420 State Revenue Budget estimates for budget development,
  • Assist as a teaching tool on how charters are funded in Texas.

For cautionary measures, we work with our Charters and strongly recommend that charter schools budget conservatively to accommodate the following unexpected changes. TEA notes that estimates of state aid calculated during the school year are based on projected charter school and school district attendance estimates, estimated school district maintenance and operations (M&O) tax rates, and estimated tax collections.  Estimation of state aid earned can be significantly impacted by factors that will not be known to the State Funding Division until the “Final” Summary of Finances (SOF) is calculated in April.  For the reasons just listed and to develop a conservative realistic budget for our clients, Charter School Success will encourage budget meetings with our clients to review history as well as wait lists and registration numbers as the year-end draws closer.

Let’s Get Started

To use the template as a budget-planning tool (which we do with our clients), you will need to decide what data you want to use to project next year’s financials.

You have a choice to use ADA/Enrollment of:

  • Your current Summary of Finance (SOF) which has been updated to show year to date (averages). Click here.
  • You may pull your 2020-2021 SOF which TEA has already posted.  The 19-20 is using your latest six weeks reporting as the main driver of estimated levels for 20-21 school year. Click here.
  • A set of numbers that best reflect your growth or decline in enrollment for the 20-21 upcoming school year.

Getting Started

  1. Pull your current Summary of Finance (19-20) or next year (20-21) for reference.  Click here.
  2. Open the template in Excel. Click here.
  3. You will then be prompted to enter your 6 digit County/District number.  The CDN is critical to activate formulas within this template that are specific to your charter and pertains to information that has already been reported to TEA.
  4. Next you will see the percentage rate of attendance has already been populated,  This field can be updated to reflect your charters current or projected attendance rate for the 20-21 fiscal year.  You will then need to report the total number of students enrolled. You may use the current year-to-date enrollment, or create new estimates if your charter is growing or shrinking next year (enter enrollment values only, do not enter ADA or FTE values).
  5. You will notice that data also exists for lines 6-47.  This data can be updated based on your latest PEIMS submission or any upcoming anticipated information from the 20-21 enrollment.  Estimates for asterisked data elements are not updated during the school year and will need to be updated with the most current numbers on the State Aid Template.
  6. Census Block updates are not permitted for State Compensatory Education allotments. Payments will be based on these estimates until the the Texas Education Agency updates the SCE census block counts to actual figures in the March Summary of Finance using TSDS actual PEIMS data.
  7. The state is now giving a facility allotment to Charter Schools, which is on line 57 of the template on the data tab.  This line defaults to NO.  If the charter anticipates August 2020 accountability rating for the district of “Meets standard’  (“A” through “D” rating), the charter can participate in this allotment by using the drop down menu to select “YES.”
  8. Tier One Allotments and Reimbursements will populate based on previous allotment amounts.
  9. The “Prior Law State Aid” tab calculates FSP State Aid based on prior law data elements and assists in the calculation to determine if the charter district is eligible for the Formula Transition Grant.
  10. The Cash Flow column on the State Aid tab allows charters to update estimates based on data reported through FSP six-weeks attendance, ADA Projection Report.  The Cash Flow column in the basis of payments to the charter.
  11. TEA published a new iteration of the Summary of Finance based on the ADA Projection Report of approved six-weeks data.  TEA encourages charters to conduct a monthly reconciliation to match the Summary of Finance published on the 10th of each month.
  12. The budget column allows charter to update estimates from the Cash Floe column based on local data and calculations to produce budget projections for the school year.

Charter schools may use this resource in conjunction with any other available tools for estimating 2020-2021 school year Foundation School Program (FSP) state aid. The results from the Microsoft Excel tool do not create an entitlement to FSP state aid.  The published Summary of Finance, available online, remains the final official source of information about charter school payments.

For assistance

If you have further questions on the State Aid Template, you can email Dina Black with the State Funding Division, or call 512-463-9351.

Happy planning for 2020-2021, and let us here at Charter School Success know if we can be of assistance in any way in helping develop a budget for your next year.

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